Prayer in Augustine’s Anti-Pelagian Sermones ad Populum. Luke 18:9-14 as Case Study

This article evaluates how the theme of «gratia orationis» is present in Augustine's Sermones ad populum during the Pelagian controversy and the sermones with an Anti-Pelagian intent and compares this with its presence in the systematic writings engaged in the Pelagian controversy. The research question is: Does the difference in genre between the pastoral-exhortative sermones and the dogmatic-polemical Anti-Pelagian writings lead to a difference in content and/or treatment of the topic of prayer? Lk 18,9-14, a scriptural passage in which the meaning of authentic prayer is central, serves as a case study for this research. This study results in a twofold observation. First, the theme of «gratia orationis» is rarely if ever thematized in the sermons and the gift character of prayer is almost never thematized, contrary to treatment thereof in the Anti-Pelagian writings. A second observation is that Lk 18,9-14 seems to be a topos in the Anti-Pelagian preaching, but is rather absent in the Anti-Pelagian writings. These observations lead to the conclusion that other contexts and genres do not bring Augustine to fundamentally different insights regarding «gratia orationis», although they do exhibit differences in the representation and thematization of the same insights.status: publishe